Fortunately there were some among the Jews who could appreciate the good and beautiful things in Greek civilization without being disloyal to their own race and their own religion; and, on the other hand, could be proud of the great teachings of the prophets without hating and despising men of other races.  They had learned well the lesson of that great prophet whom we call the Second Isaiah, that Jehovah chose Israel, not as his special “pet” or favorite, but as his servant to teach all nations about the true God and his righteous rule.  Such men realized that the Greeks and Egyptians and other foreigners were Jehovah’s children like themselves, and that instead of despising them they ought to make friends with them and try to teach them the religion of Jehovah.

=Jewish religious books written for Greeks.=—­It was by men of this broad spirit that a number of books were written for the sake of winning Greeks to the Jewish religion.  These books were written in the Greek language and explained to Greek readers the law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets.  Among the most important of these books was the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek.  This translation was made, indeed, chiefly for the benefit of Jews living in Greek countries who had forgotten the old Hebrew tongue.  But the translators also had in mind the great non-Jewish Greek world.

And the new translation, sometimes called the Septuagint (that is, the book of the seventy translators who are said to have worked on it), found its way into the hands of many a Greek reader who learned from it for the first time something about the religion of Jehovah.

The author of the story of Jonah, in the Bible, was another Jew of this broad spirit.  He had traveled in Egypt.  He had seen the vices and sins of the heathen.  And he had tried to tell them of the just and merciful laws of the one God of all the world, Jehovah.  Many of his fellow Jews criticised him for this.  “Why do you have anything to do with these Gentile dogs?” they asked.  It was in answer to this question that he wrote about Jonah, the prophet whom Jehovah had sent to preach to the wicked heathen city of Nineveh.  He had tried to avoid obeying the command, but at last had gone; and when the Ninevites listened to his preaching and repented and turned to Jehovah he was angry.  And Jehovah said unto him, “Should not I have regard for Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand?” (That is, six score thousand little children.)

Jonah in this story is a type of the Jewish people.  As Jehovah sent Jonah to preach to the Ninevites, so he would send the Jews to teach the nations of his love.  What a pity to be so narrow-minded, so blinded by pride of race, as to have no sympathy or good will for any other race of men!  This is the lesson the author of the book meant to teach.